


If Only You Saw What I Can See

by Blake



Category: Merlin (TV)
Genre: Bathing/Washing, Blow Jobs, Body Image, Canon Era, Come Eating, Cuddling, Exhibitionism, First Time, Gay Arthur Pendragon (Merlin), Hand Jobs, Hands, M/M, Masturbation, Pining
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-20
Updated: 2021-01-20
Packaged: 2021-03-12 09:15:44
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,738
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28883028
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Blake/pseuds/Blake
Summary: Perhaps it’s not so bad, being a stupid boy who looks at other stupid boys the way they look at him.or,Five times Merlin looks at Arthur and doesn't touch, and one time Arthur looks at Merlin and does.
Relationships: Merlin/Arthur Pendragon (Merlin)
Comments: 24
Kudos: 211





	If Only You Saw What I Can See

*

The first time he catches Merlin looking at his chest, Arthur feels a rush of excitement course hotly through his veins, quicker than mead, almost as fierce as battle-fury. It’s just a moment—Merlin’s eyes flicker up to his face almost as soon as Arthur steps out from behind the partition—but the effect of it lasts. Arthur smiles to himself while Merlin prattles on about breakfast. His feeling is something like pride, or perhaps the uglier flavor of it that finds pleasure in others’ weakness.

He doesn’t think too much about the look or the feeling that accompanied it, because any thoughts having to do with _men_ and _looking_ tend to leave him self-deprecating and distracted, and he can’t afford to be either of those things while training his knights. He takes the tunic Merlin hands him and puts it on behind the partition, and that’s the end of it. 

*

Usually, Arthur wears his chainmail whenever it is reasonable. It is formless, heavy, and draping. It renders his body equal to every other man’s.

He has no inherent discomfort with his own skin, but the way men look at him makes it weigh more heavily on him to the point of constriction. He knows, from years of experience, that men look at him in a hundred _calculating_ ways. If he’s seen in a tunic that he’s recently outgrown, other knights look at the muscles of his arms appraisingly, measuring his strength against their own. If one of his servants saw him in the nude before a bath, he could feel their curious eyes on him, puzzling him over as if gauging whether he was a man yet, or still a boy. At council meetings in summertime, when it’s too hot to hide behind layers, his father’s Lords stare at him like a hog they might choose to slaughter, as if they hold the power to decide whether his shoulders are broad enough to carry a kingdom.

All the eyes on him make him fret over the most ridiculous things. He worries about not being tall enough to inspire confidence in the people he will someday lead. He wastes time wondering if he should be more muscular to make sure the knights never feel resentful about losing to him.

Worst of all, the attention makes him acutely aware of the vast difference between how other men look at him and how he looks at other men.

“Good morning, sire, it’s—”

Merlin’s step falters slightly as he strides into the room, his gaze tripping over the skin of Arthur’s chest, which Arthur deliberately bared by pushing down his blankets when he heard his door opening.

It’s only a brief moment before Merlin rights himself and continues talking with the lightest flush of pink on his cheeks. But it’s enough. It’s what Arthur wanted. It’s a victory, to see this ridiculous boy guilty of Arthur’s worst crimes. It’s a soothing balm to every memory he has of looking at other men the way _Merlin_ looks at _him_.

He can’t even describe what makes it different, but he _knows_ it is, feels it in his bones. He remembers being a boy, much younger than Merlin, heat blossoming in his chest and on his face as he watched Sir Alan don his armor, muscles bunching gracefully as he moved. He remembers his jaw dropping, his heart stirring when Sir Derec smiled at him, wide and open and playful. He remembers his father sending them both away, and he remembers realizing that his peers didn’t notice things like Sir Derec’s dimples or smile lines or straight teeth. They didn’t have anything to say about Sir Alan’s thigh muscles, either—only his strength, as though it were unattached to his body. There was something different, and something not quite right, about the way Arthur looked at men.

But Merlin looks at him that same way. It makes Arthur feel powerful. It makes him feel like Sir Alan or Sir Derec, instead of like the stupid boy who looks at men the wrong way.

“You seem thoughtful today,” Merlin says, easy and bright as the sunlight streaking through the clouds and windows. “Trying to puzzle out mathematics again? Remember, two and two is…” He mouths the word “ _four_ ” but doesn’t voice it. Arthur presses his lips together to bite back his amusement, even though Merlin has turned to arrange breakfast on the table and thus could hardly notice a smile.

“Is that what Gaius has been teaching you, mathematics? He’s meant to be training you as an apprentice, not torturing you.” Arthur sits up and stretches his arms over his head, wondering if the motion will catch Merlin’s eye.

“Of course he’s not torturing me.” Merlin turns around with a loose smile on his face, one dimple in his cheek, and that mean spark in his eyes that makes him much better company than any other servant. “That’s what I have you for.”

Arthur almost laughs despite himself, happy for the reminder of his humor and honesty, grateful that there are concrete reasons he hasn’t had Merlin sacked for looking at his prince the way he does.

*

It’s a pleasant reprieve to lose himself in Merlin’s sticky, secret, unshakeable gaze. In the years since Arthur first realized that he cannot control something so deep-seated as the way he sees the world, his only control over it has been to limit his exposure to any disparity that draws his attention to it.

These past few months, though, he’s so aware of _Merlin’s_ perception that it burns through his mind like so much kindling and leaves him blissfully unaware of any thoughts of his own transgressions.

The boy is a mystery in many things, but not in the way his eyes catch on the unlaced gape of Arthur’s shirt with nothing like envy or critique in the sharp, hollow angles of his face, which so easily take on the harsh shadows of judgment when he’s thinking anything remotely impertinent about his master’s choices.

He’s making one of his disapproving expressions one morning when Arthur rolls out of bed to find him glaring down at some stitchwork with an absurdly haughty eyebrow. “I see you’ve managed to split your trousers. Again.”

Not yet fully alert, Arthur stumbles across the room to look over Merlin’s shoulder. It’s a pair of trousers he didn’t even remember being in need of mending. “What are you insinuating?” he asks, waking up quickly at the sight of blood on Merlin’s needle-pricked fingers.

In reply, Merlin turns his head and lowers his dramatically widened eyes down past his bare torso to the vicinity of Arthur’s rear.

Arthur feels himself go red. “It’s called _muscle_ , Merlin,” he lashes out, suddenly unable to bear Merlin’s eyes on him with that teasing glare. He wants to tackle Merlin to the ground and make him look at his face. He wants to squeeze Merlin tight around the middle and feel how crushable he is. Instead, he pokes hard at the bony ridges of Merlin’s shoulder, through his thin shirt. He has Merlin’s bones mapped out by touch. “Not that you’d know anything about it.”

Merlin flinches under the attention and turns back to his stitching and mumbling, “Any more _muscle_ and you’ll have to see the tailor.” But his eyes flicker once more to Arthur’s backside. It’s the fact that he seems unable to help himself that makes Arthur’s throat flutter with victory.

*

It’s only the third or fourth, or maybe the fifth time Arthur has saved Merlin’s life, but he’s drunk on complacency and celebratory wine that evening nonetheless, and so he orders a bath just to have Merlin’s undivided attention, because somehow that has become a reward.

Only he doesn’t have Merlin’s attention. While Arthur soaks in the narrow tub, Merlin sits on a nearby chair, staring at the floor with eyes so dark and glittering that Arthur momentarily doubts his memory of them being blue.

“It’s not everyone who has the privilege of being saved from the clutches of a dangerous beast by a valiant prince,” Arthur blurts out.

Merlin’s eyes are, indeed, blue. They’re still wet, though, even as he meets Arthur’s gaze with some kind of dark humor sucking in his cheekbones. “Indeed, that would be a rare privilege,” he mumbles, completely and infuriatingly denying the incident that morning with the enchanted stag and its sharp antlers headed for Merlin’s stomach and its sudden tumble that could only have been the delayed effect of the arrow Arthur had pierced its hide with moments prior.

It’s incredibly impertinent for a servant to not only expect his prince to save him, but also to cheekily refuse to thank him for it. And then to go back to moping with his head down, as if his prince isn’t bathing right before his eyes.

Arthur studies his profile, counting the long shadows of his eyelashes. Then he looks down into the bathwater when he realizes he’s started rubbing his thumb and forefinger idly across the head of his prick, which is plump and half-hard with the surrender of all his tension to hot water.

As soon as he realizes what he’s doing, he expects Merlin’s stupid laugh to break the silence. But Merlin can’t laugh at what he doesn’t notice, and he’s still not even looking at him. Slowly, with a careful, broad splash that should be loud enough to suggest something, he moves his arm underwater to wrap his hand around his cock, just a gentle squeeze to build-relieve pressure. He bites back a sigh. He’s trying to get Merlin’s attention, but his heart beats wetly against his overwarm chest as though in suspense of getting caught.

He pulls slightly, slowly, filling in his palm until his blood surges and quickens his pace involuntarily. His splashing is loud enough, then. Merlin’s eyes barely lift from the floor to subtly land on the clear water of the tub. Arthur slows his movements again, bracing for any of Merlin’s reactions: laughter, a barbed comment about his entitlement, a demure blushing and turning away. Or maybe he’ll quietly walk out of the room. Or maybe he’ll come closer and watch, maybe his eyes will stay locked on Arthur’s body while he brings himself off, and maybe he’ll get hard just from looking at Arthur’s stiff cock.

Arthur can’t fully bite back the next sigh, so it comes out a half-voiced grunt, and Merlin’s eyes are still fixed on his hand. Arthur lifts his hips so his cock breaches the surface of the water, squeezes hard on the next stroke so the pink tip peeks out from its hood to kiss the air, and grunts again as he rubs across it with his hot-wet thumb. He hears Merlin’s breath hitch and knows he’s watching still. He wonders if Merlin knows Arthur’s letting him watch, or if he thinks he’s getting away with looking, thinks Arthur’s stupid enough not to notice such an intense, dragging gaze following his every movement.

“Like what you see?” Arthur asks, shockingly breathless, as he braces his knees open and against the sides of the tub, feels himself start to draw tight as he jerks himself faster and harder.

Merlin scoffs, either taken aback by the question or else prepared already to respond with careful derision. Arthur’s too far gone to tell. “I’ve seen bigger.”

He only meets Arthur’s gaze with a sidelong, half-hearted glance, as if reluctant to look away from the main event. It’s enough to make Arthur’s stomach roil, though: the thought that Merlin has seen bigger, the fact that Merlin is in the habit of looking at hard pricks, the fact that Merlin can’t tear his eyes away from this particular one.

Arthur presses up mostly out of the water for a firmer grip, because he’s close enough to want to get closer, tug harder, fuck up into his fist without splashing all the water out of the tub.

“I suppose you make all your servants watch you like this,” Merlin says, voice husky, eyes too blue and glittering and knowing as they meet Arthur’s and pin him to the spot. He doesn’t even watch as Arthur’s cock suddenly spills in thick, desperate spurts all across his hand and chest. He watches Arthur’s face, and it makes him feel terribly vulnerable and hot, makes him shudder and spend until he’s oversensitive in his own unobserved hand.

“Oh yes, every single one of them,” Arthur says, tongue lazy and sticking in his own dry mouth.

He knows Merlin doesn’t think he’s telling the truth, but the words make Merlin’s expression harden into something unknowable and uncomfortable. It frightens Arthur to not understand, like he’s been ambushed alone in unfamiliar territory with no strategy in place. He retreats. “And the best part is,” he says brightly, lowering himself into the cooling water and rinsing his hand and chest, “ _you_ get to clean the tub for me.”

The tight clench of annoyance in Merlin’s jaw will have to be satisfaction enough, since he averts his eyes while Arthur stands and drips before him.

*

The thing is, it was never meant to be about the way _Arthur_ looked at _Merlin_.

Merlin is nothing like anyone Arthur has ever before dreamt about or thought of touching. He’s frail-looking, underfed, pale as winter, and lacking any of the strength Arthur ever found appealing in other men while simultaneously lacking the softness he vaguely imagines when he thinks of marriage.

It was meant to be Arthur placating himself with the knowledge that this peasant boy, his trusted friend, took pleasure in looking at a man’s body. _His_ body. It wasn’t supposed to be Arthur waking up from fevered dreams of Merlin looking at him, Merlin’s white teeth biting into his full, rounded lip, Merlin’s mouth, Merlin’s spit-shining smile as he watches Arthur’s cock stiffening, and what if Merlin’s mouth _kissed_ it, and how wet would it be to touch _inside_.

But he wakes from one of these dreams when his bed curtains are pushed open by an assailant. He’s already rutting into the sheets when he blearily opens his eyes and finds Merlin standing before him, and Arthur’s almost certain he’s real, and not a dream.

“What are you doing?” The note of alarm in Merlin’s voice makes Arthur feel slightly better about being caught in such a compromising state.

He ruts into the bed again as though he’d been consciously intending to all along. Merlin’s eyes follow the edge of his blanket as it shifts down to pool around his hips. “Nothing that concerns _you_ ,” he says, and then turns onto his already arching back, pushing his trousers down and kicking them down with the bedclothes to expose the hand he wraps around his cock.

Merlin holds his mouth plush and wet, not agape, but not pursed shut, either. He stands beside Arthur’s bed and looks, first at his chest, then lower, and then into his eyes. Arthur sighs in pleasure under his own hand, and Merlin’s eyes slide closed and flutter violently behind their pale lids, concealing what might be rapid thoughts, which Arthur is too sleepy and otherwise occupied to worry about.

“Alright then,” Merlin gasps, and when he opens his eyes they shine so hard they almost seem black. “If it doesn’t concern me, then just go about your business.”

And then he sits down on Arthur’s bed, one foot braced on the floor and one curled in toward himself. His trousers are dark under his tunic and Arthur’s eyes are still bleary, so he can’t tell if he’s hard, but he’s determined to make it so.

He closes his eyes and tries to imagine what he would have wanted to see Sir Alan or Sir Derec do. He braces one foot on the bed, tensing his leg muscles as he slowly fucks up into the pressure of his tight fist. Then an image comes unbidden to his mind of shapely lips sucking sweetly around a fingertip, and without thinking, he’s bringing his free thumb up to his own lips to mouth at gently, teasingly, as if it was the tip of his own—

His eyes fly open at the sound of a moan and then all he sees is Merlin’s curved, glossy mouth, parting around nothing but air.

“Show me,” Merlin grunts, voice sticky and oversweet. Arthur’s thighs stretch farther apart at the sound. “Show me where you’re wet.”

Arthur’s spine curls, his vision goes white with nonsensical heat. He puts his spit-wet thumb to the bared slit of his cock, where he’s pulsing, dripping at the thought of Merlin watching him, at the thought of following a command given by his _servant_. And it feels so good, so absolving to be seen like this, and not think about seeing anything but the way Merlin’s pupils are blown wide and black, his lips parted and pointed as though braced to moan at any second.

“Put it on your chest,” Merlin chokes out next. It only takes a second for Arthur to decide what he means, and he gathers the next white burst on his thumb and then spreads it across the hardened red nub of his nipple. Merlin’s mouth bites itself and pulses, as though he’s imagining sucking, and Arthur tries to swallow down a mad, wanton moan but it rumbles out anyways. He squeezes the mound of muscle Merlin seems so fond of and is rewarded by the sight of Merlin’s teeth carving deep into his lower lip.

Merlin’s next command comes out too fast, too full of breath, too much. “Show me where— _Open yourself up for me_.”

And Arthur’s never even consciously _thought_ of such things, yet he _knows_ what Merlin wants to see, and so he shows him. Knees curled tight, thighs spread wide, right hand stroking his cock against his stomach, and he pushes his fingers down, down, and spreads his cheeks open between two splayed fingers.

“Fuck, Arthur,” Merlin groans, sounding like he’s coming even though he’s doing nothing but _looking_ , and then Arthur’s spurting hot and thick across his chest again. He burns under Merlin’s pained gaze as it bores into his own. He gasps out non-words as his mouth tries to invent the shape of Merlin’s lips. His bones melt with the heavy, wet, freeing certainty that he’s not a Sir Alan or a Sir Derec, that they’re just two stupid boys looking at each other the wrong way.

When the world starts to right itself around him and his breaths slow to something less athletic, it feels suddenly like a lot of vulnerability to grapple with. He lowers his legs, rubs his hands until they grow tacky. Merlin’s lips are trembling. “You may clean me up, if you like.” It’s as much vulnerability as he can muster with words after everything his body has shown. He watches Merlin’s mouth hopefully, waiting for the curl of his tongue between his lips.

Instead, his lips purse tightly together. Something dark and dangerous passes over his face. It pulls Arthur’s stomach tight and blindly wanting. “I can’t.”

“It’s your job.” Arthur clears his throat. “To keep me washed.”

Merlin clears his throat, too. It seems absurd, suddenly, that he’s still sitting in the same position, one leg extended, probably hard in his trousers, but unmoving. Meanwhile, Arthur has writhed around half the bed and is sprawled out spent and messy with his trousers somewhere between the sheets. “I can’t touch you,” Merlin clarifies.

Arthur tears his gaze away from Merlin’s mouth and looks to the curtains above him, not allowing a single thought to pass through his head.

Perhaps mistaking Arthur’s body language for upset, Merlin continues, sounding as irritated as though he were the one being pushed away. “If I touched you, I wouldn’t be able to stop, and the king would surely have me burnt at the stake for all the things I would do to you.”

A gentle nudge of humor finds its way to Arthur’s chest. A hum of laughter comes out. He can’t believe that for once, Merlin’s right. “ _I_ should have you burnt at the stake for merely saying such a thing,” he says, forcing ease into his voice. He folds his hands behind his head and crosses one leg over the other, forcing ease into everything.

Merlin laughs, too, so darkly that Arthur has to look up and see that dangerous edge to his expression again, like a storm about to break. It frightens him. It compels him, the same way thick sheets of muscle and bright grins and graceful strength once did. He would like to see it every day. He thinks, in time, he might. “But you won’t,” Merlin murmurs, looking deep and searching into his eyes.

Arthur lifts an eyebrow. “We shall see,” he says. And then, because there’s still giddiness in his veins and hope in his heart, he can’t stop himself from wiping his stomach clean on a pillow and then throwing the pillow directly into Merlin’s face.

The affronted gape of his ridiculous mouth is enough to keep Arthur feeling like he’s won for the rest of the day.

Perhaps it’s not so bad, being a stupid boy who looks at other stupid boys the way they look at him.

*

Only it’s hard to stop. Looking at Merlin quickly becomes an all-consuming pastime.

At banquets, Merlin meets his eyes from across the room with a twinkle of humor that Arthur’s body apparently finds indistinguishable from promise, and he promptly loses track of all conversation happening at the table.

In his room, Merlin complains and complains while refilling Arthur’s water cup, and all Arthur can focus on is the marble-white skin of his neck, usually hidden by his scarf, that’s suddenly visible when he bends just so; when he drinks the water, his tongue is thick with imagining what that skin tastes like.

Out on patrol, Arthur suddenly can’t stop catching glimpses of Merlin running errands, smiling at everyone in the lower town and speaking words to them Arthur’s too far away to hear, though he finds himself watching Merlin’s lips and trying to read them—or something. He certainly watches Merlin’s lips, at any rate.

He lets Merlin try to scrub the floor of his chambers for about twenty minutes before Arthur realizes he has spent every one of those twenty minutes neglecting his speech-writing in favor of watching him. It’s the supple curve of his spine in the air. It’s the flex of his scrawny forearms as they work, every movement seeming raw and desperate, grasping for strength out of thin air. It’s the subtle shift of his weight from one bony knee to the other, making Arthur thrum with wanting to know how darkly they’re bruised, if they’ve gone numb or how deep they ache. _All the things I would do to you,_ Merlin had said.

Arthur tells him to stop scrubbing and leave, and Merlin has the audacity to _complain_ about being interrupted. Arthur doesn’t care, as long as he doesn’t have to say out loud that he’s moments away from breaking and going to lick the sweat from Merlin’s temple or grab him by the narrow points of his hips too see how easy it is to lift his knees off the ground. Judging by the long, hard, swallow Merlin takes while standing and stumbling out of the room, Arthur thinks all of that might have been visible in his eyes, anyways. 

The worst, the absolute worst, is that Arthur gets distracted by the way Merlin rides, thighs spread pitifully wide by the saddle, hands gripping tight like he just _has_ to exert _some_ control over the thing splitting him apart like a wishbone. They ride all day through the forest, Arthur fighting to stay ahead the whole time so that he has nothing to look at but the road and the trees.

At the end of the day, though, when they’re lying on the ground beside the fire, there’s nothing to look at but Merlin.

Arthur closes his eyes. 

Unfortunately, the view there isn’t much better. His mind provides a parade of images to keep him from sleep, mostly centered around the fresh memory of droplets of clear water clinging to and dripping from the delicate angles of Merlin’s face when they’d rinsed off in the stream that evening. He feels feverish with memory and conjecture. His throat is parched. He can sense every inch of space between his body and Merlin’s. He’s certain he must reek of want.

“Arthur?”

Eager to avoid seeing Merlin’s face coated in firelight, Arthur ignores the whisper and pretends to be asleep. It’s not cowardice, he tells himself. It takes courage to acknowledge one’s own weaknesses.

The images repeating in his mind don’t stop until they are very abruptly wiped clean and replaced with the very real, very near, very unmistakable sounds of Merlin touching himself under his trousers. Arthur opens his eyes and his vision is all fire, then: fire and firelight kissing the tense lines of Merlin’s profile. The softest little gasps fall from between his lips, hitching Arthur’s breath to each one. Merlin’s hips are angled slightly toward the fire, hiding the details of his movements from Arthur’s view, but seeing isn’t enough, anyways.

Arthur squirms across the ground, inching closer because he _has_ to. He can’t not. Merlin groans and his hips turn up to face the sky—a blind, mute acknowledgment that he knows Arthur’s not sleeping. Between the clanking of his own chainmail and the rapid waves of _furrow-relax-furrow_ on Merlin’s brow, it feels like it takes ages for him to get close enough to extend one shaking hand and hold it hovering over the hot, gusting exhales of Merlin’s mouth.

Merlin groans again, the movement of his hand under his clothes picking up speed. His breath caresses Arthur’s hand, wet and hot, and suddenly Arthur’s hard cock is twitching and leaking in his pants. He feels like he’ll die if he doesn’t touch—just one touch, and then Merlin can berate him for breaking their rules and Merlin can have his rules back and Arthur can have his memory for torment—so he pushes his thumb gently onto the ruined seal of Merlin’s molten lips, half certain he’ll die anyways from the touch of something so soft and perfect and warm as blood. 

Then, as terrible and world-ending as the earth opening up to swallow him whole, Merlin’s mouth shudders pitiful and sharp against his thumb, all bared teeth, and then Merlin’s lips and tongue draw him inside, sucking and needy, the wettest, hottest thing Arthur’s ever touched.

Arthur fights for breath and rolls onto his front, just so he can _see_. But then as soon as he’s seen it, and seen the hunger written in fluttering runes of shadow across Merlin’s face, it’s not enough. He hooks his thumb past Merlin’s hard teeth and drags him closer and surges forward and fits his mouth right where it needs to be.

Merlin kisses him like this is what he’d wanted all along. It dissolves Arthur’s senses; he can smell every surface of Merlin’s mouth, hear the tang of his breath, taste the slickness of their kiss. It’s the biggest, purest thing he can remember feeling. He’s crumbling under it; he needs it to go on forever.

“I’ll keep you safe,” Arthur pants across Merlin’s trembling mouth. It’s odd to break the silence; his ears are ringing so loudly with the mad rush of his blood, he can hardly hear his own voice. Words seem meaningless, anyhow, though they spill out as easily as moans or pleas, which they may as well be. “Whatever you do to me, I’ll keep your secrets. Just—”

Arthur gets drawn back into kissing, then, with Merlin grabbing his neck with both hands and pulling him bodily down. His mouth tastes too good to be real, or else too good for anything else in the world to be real. One of the hands on Arthur’s neck is warmer than the other, and Arthur’s stomach drops into the earth when he realizes why. He moans around Merlin’s searching, possessive tongue, reaches down under Merlin’s trousers like he knows the way, and wraps his hand around the scalding, soft skin of Merlin’s steel-hard cock. It presses demandingly into his touch, meets the curl of his palm like it would swell to fill anything Arthur gave it. Arthur’s already drooling with how much he wants to give it.

“I—ah—I suppose,” Merlin says choppily, short on words for once, even _before_ Arthur tries to kiss him into shutting up. He pulls away with a sharp gasp as Arthur pulls his cock out and works his hand over every inch of it, tight and greedy. “I can’t be executed for the things _you_ do to _me_.”

Arthur’s too happy with the hot, pulsing weight in his hand to be very bothered that Merlin can spare a thought to the topic of execution at such a time. Plus, he’s busy trying to fit his free hand under himself just to loosen his trousers. _Plus_ , a second later, Merlin pushes him over and onto his back and pulls Arthur’s trousers open himself, which pretty clearly undermines his whole point about active roles, passive roles, execution, and all of that nonsense which _clearly_ can’t matter anymore when _this_ feels so fucking good.

For the first time since they started kissing, Arthur looks up into Merlin’s face and finds his open eyes. They’re tarry black in the dark, flickering gold in the reflected firelight, and they look hastily and lovingly across every inch of Arthur’s face. Arthur tangles their ankles together, pinning Merlin close and forcing him to hold himself up on both arms over Arthur. He jerks Merlin’s cock without finesse, just needing to watch Merlin fall apart above him.

Soon enough, Merlin’s eyes slide shut again, his jaw hinges open on a keening sigh, and his hips go still. He’s too high up to kiss, so Arthur presses his free hand to Merlin’s mouth once again. It’s Arthur who cries out when Merlin comes, his cock surging against one palm while his teeth and lips wrap sweetly around the meat of the other. Arthur’s wrists come to life like soil in spring rain under the wet spill of Merlin’s breaths, the hot spurts of his seed.

He doesn’t have time to catch his breath before Merlin is kissing him again. He doesn’t have time to lose himself in the kiss before Merlin is leaving, drawing a quick line down Arthur’s body to kneel between his legs and dragging Arthur’s stomach along with him. “Fuck,” Merlin whispers, pushing Arthur’s hands away and then his trousers.

Arthur looks at the swollen, bitten, spit-wet splay of Merlin’s mouth, and then down at the leaking crown of his own cock, and a sound comes out of his mouth that he can’t be held responsible for.

Merlin’s hand curls around the base of his cock, gentle and careful, maddening. Arthur’s thighs start tensing, and then set to quaking. Merlin drags the front of his chainmail down to cover his head, Arthur’s cock, and anywhere the two might meet.

“What are you doing?” Arthur whines, only because he needs Merlin to do _something_ or he might burst.

Merlin’s voice comes out muffled—but more importantly, it lands damp and warm near the tip of Arthur’s cock. “I’ve had to look at you in your chainmail all day.” His tongue flicks across the sensitive slit, sending Arthur’s knees buckling and his heart racing. Merlin’s free hand slides up under Arthur’s shirt, gliding along his skin, moments away from finding the dangerous stutter of Arthur’s heart. The movement of his hand makes the mess he’d made moments before on Arthur’s mail glisten in the dancing firelight. Instinctively, Arthur brings up his similarly soiled wrist up to his own mouth and licks needily at the drying, sticky mess. He’s not so much focused on the taste as he is some magical hope that he can make Merlin’s mouth move by moving his own. “I’ve loved your chainmail for ages.”

Arthur gives up on looking. He lets his head fall back onto the earth and looks up at the starless sky while licking Merlin’s seed off his wrist until finally, the sweet, wet suck of Merlin’s mouth takes him in. 

He tells himself he’ll last longer next time. 

“You had better have this washed by morning,” Arthur grumbles, once Merlin is lying in his arms, carefully to one side. He pokes, dismayed, at the crusted stains left on his chainmail. He can honestly say he’s never had to deal with such a problem before.

“Or what?” Merlin asks, voice low and lazy. He shifts slightly. The warmth of his body is too good to push away for his insolence; Arthur hopes they can sleep like this. He hopes he can keep his promise to protect Merlin’s secrets and his own. He hopes they can make something work.

Arthur closes his eyes and forces his throat to relax enough to let out words he has very little practice saying. “Or I’ll never let you fuck me in it.”

Merlin starts at that, suddenly on his elbows and peering down at him, though Arthur keeps his eyes closed and stifles most of his smile. After a few moments—Arthur wonders if he’s gawping in surprise, or gazing with those twinkling, happy eyes he gets sometimes—Merlin lowers his chin on Arthur’s chest and says, “Since you promised to keep my secrets, I’m going to tell you one. To test if you really will. In case it’s just a rotten trick you said to get me to suck your cock, and you’re secretly planning on—”

“What’s the secret?” Arthur asks happily, settling deeper into the grass beneath them and pulling Merlin closer still.

“It’s not really your chainmail that I’ve loved for ages.”

Arthur opens his eyes then, just to make sure he’s still awake and the sky is still there. There’s a gap in the clouds and some stars shining through, but he’s pretty sure it’s still the same sky. He lets his smile run loose and free, then pulls Merlin’s head down to kiss his hair. “I’ll do my best to prove to you that I’ll keep my word.”


End file.
